It was the first talking picture and uses the transition from
silent to talking as a metaphor for the immigrant's transition from Old
Country to New World.
You may recall that the struggle is between
the young Jolson who wants to sing popular music and assimilate into
American culture, and his father, a umpteenth-generation orthodox
cantor.

This dialectic is a snapshot of the two kinds of Jews during that period (1880-1920).

There
were the religious Jews who had to struggle to hang on to their Judaism
- such as keeping Shabbos in a culture that expected them to work seven
days a week.

Then there were the less committed Jews who were less uncomfortable with the great melting pot.

Bubbie's world: the West Side of Chicago, 1911.

A community with all kinds of Jews.

Her
parents were the latter kind of Jew. Chicago was their kind of town.
They could do what they wanted, eat what they wanted, and still speak
Yiddish to all their friends.

The music stopped, however, when grandma came.

I.e., Bubbie's bubbie.

Her father Alexander and her uncle Arle brought over their mother from Ukraine.

"Once my bubbie came," Bubbie reminisced, "There was no more driving on Shabbos.

"We had to walk all the way to my grandmother's apartment every Shabbos."

Try
to imagine her telling that at age 90 in a listful way that made you
think you were talking to the little girl who found this new rule
restrictive and inconvenient.

As far as I know it was a few blocks. But in her memory, it was a trek across the Sahara.

So I asked her, "Bubbie, why did your father do that? Why did he stop driving on Shabbos?"

"I guess he was afraid to when his mother was around. I guess he respected her."